The striking thing about 9/11 not how much it's changed, but how little

The death of the twin towers 10 years ago today “changed life in America forever.” We know that’s so because the media and their battalions of commentators keep telling us it’s so — often in just those words.

Except that it really isn’t so.

The most striking thing about the attack of 9/11 is not how much it has changed life in this country but how little.

Oh, sure, the sight of those fuel-laden jets setting the towers and thousands in them ablaze is seared into our collective memory; we’ll never forget it. How could we? But, with a few exceptions, its impact on the everyday life of most Americans has been almost imperceptible.

The attack launched the “war on terror,” you’ll recall. But it’s been a war unlike any we’ve ever fought — devoid of sacrifice for all but the heroic few, less than one-tenth of 1 percent of the citizenry who wear the uniform of our all-volunteer forces.

The Vietnam War, by ending the military draft that involved real shared sacrifice and shattering the illusion that our government would not lie to us, did more to change life in America than 9/11 ever did.

What sacrifice has 9/11 imposed? Does having to shed your shoes at the airport or endure full-body scans constitute “sacrifice”? It has to; it’s all we’ve got.

In place of actual sacrifice, we’ve enjoyed three hefty tax cuts and a huge new prescription drug benefit — all gratis, no offsetting tax hikes or spending cuts.

Even the nearly decade-old wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the rescue effort in Libya have been put on the credit card.

Tax freebies, every one.

The one thing 9/11 was supposed to have produced — besides fear — was a renewed sense of national unity. And for a time there, it really did exist, and it was special. Support for President George W. Bush reached 90 percent after the attack, an all-time high. Democrats, like everyone else, rallied ’round the president. But that, too, faded with time.

Today, instead of unity, we have a partisan division rarely matched, if ever. Not since the Civil War 150 years ago have the Democratic and Republican parties so bitterly opposed what the other stood for or their hostility been so stingingly personal.

Republicans pile disrespect on President Obama almost daily. When have you ever heard the leader of one party vow to destroy a presidency as Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), to his shame, pledged to do?

But there is all that fear, right? Tell me, no fibbing now, do you really walk around all day fretting some guy with a foot-long beard or woman with a head scarf is going to blow up folks at the Sunday church social? I didn’t think so. Could be wrong, but I doubt it.

There may be some apprehension in more likely targets, such as New York or Los Angeles, but even there the fear factor has receded noticeably. And out in the Peorias of the country, the hinterlands far removed from the coasts, fear is more likely to focus on the weirdo neighbor with the world-class gun collection and the notoriously hot temper.

As Maurice Carroll, director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute, put it: “Have we made lifestyle changes because of 9/11 fears, or is it life as usual? Overwhelmingly, a shade less in New York City than elsewhere, it’s life as usual.”

But what about those cameras at intersections, ATMs, malls and plazas spying on us and eroding our privacy? There are more of them, sure, but they were there in abundance even before 9/11 because, let’s face it, you’re more likely to be mugged by a street thief than blown to smithereens by an agent of the mullahs.

Commercial exploitation of the internet has done more to erode privacy.

Some argue terrorism has cost us the safety provided by 9,000 miles of ocean east and west. But that vanished a half-century ago with the deployment of Soviet intercontinental ballistic missiles and their submarine-launched counterparts. Remember kids being taught to take cover under school desks?

We were at risk long before 9/11, but we got used to that, too, right?

Much of the blame — if that’s the word — for overreading the lifestyle impact of 9/11 belongs to us, the journalists, and the necessary but imperfect profession we practice. We’re good at gathering facts and impressions quickly, less so at reading their ultimate meaning.

That’s better left to historians working with the fragments of great events that are swept up piecemeal by journalists. Let’s hope they don’t get it wrong.